1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to data content, and, more specifically, associating historical information with sensory data during collection and editing processes, and distribution thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Information has become quintessential in what has become a digital era. Content providers, such as news sources, gather, prepare, publish, and distribute the information or content. The content may include text, photographs, graphics, video, audio, aural, and/or other sensory data.
To allow for distribution of the content from content providers to content consumers, network infrastructure has evolved. The advent of the Internet has made the content produced by the content providers accessible around the globe. Bandwidth of wireless networks, such as cellular telephone networks, has also dramatically increased to allow for distribution of content other than strictly voice. Other content may include text and images. Satellite networks have also increased bandwidth to communicate content to consumers.
While the network infrastructure has evolved, so too has devices that connect to the networks. Where it was once only possible to access the content on traditional personal computers, wireless devices, such as cellular telephones and personal digital assistants (PDA's), have evolved to access content on the Internet. Traditional televisions have become interactive and able to display content other than simple broadcast images. Satellite communication devices, such as digital radios, are also capable of receiving content other than audio.
Because of the variety of devices and distribution channels that have become available, content providers struggle to provide the content (i) for each of the different distribution channels, and (ii) for each of the devices operable to receive different data formats, generally due to the devices having certain hardware characteristics. For example, a news media that provides news content to newspaper, magazine, television, Internet, and wireless consumers faces a significant challenge to gather, edit, format, store, publish, and distribute the content or sensory data (e.g., photograph) for each distribution channel and device type.
Each of the steps, gathering, editing, formatting, storing, publishing, and distributing, includes many processes. For example, the formatting step includes formatting the content for each of the different distribution channels and devices. For example, a photograph requires high resolution for print and broadcast, but low resolution for Internet and wireless distribution due to limited bandwidth of the network and is display resolution of the display device. Cropping of the photograph, too, may be different for the different devices as a cellular telephone has a smaller display than does a computer monitor.
Given that the content is produced different for the different distribution channels and devices, the content provider utilizes personnel that spends much time and money to format and edit the content using traditional editing and publishing techniques. Traditional editing and publishing techniques basically include: (i) modifying or editing raw data created for different distribution channels, (ii) specifying particular distribution channels for each file type, (iii) distributing the content, and (iv) storing the datafiles according to file type.
In practice, it is not uncommon for the content providers to reuse or “repurpose” the content in relation to different stories for many years. However, the raw data is often lost due to storage space concerns, necessity, and/or organizational policies. Once the raw data is lost, it may be impossible to recreate or obtain adequate reproductions to repurpose the content for the different stories. In other words, it may not be possible to simply undo editing that has been performed on the content once original or early versions of the content is lost. For example, a photograph may originally include two people. The photograph may thereafter be cropped to exclude on of the people. If at a future date an editor wants to include the photograph with both people, it is not possible without having the original content (or copy thereof) with both people to start the editing process again.
Traditionally, datafiles that are formatted include header information that describes the content, such as data content (e.g., photograph), data format, creation date, author, creation software, version, etc. Other software may read the header information to translate, display, or embed the datafile. While this header information provides context to the data, it does not describe input data indicative of environmental or recording device settings used or measured during the gathering of the sensory data or functional operations performed on the sensory data during the editing process.